


In Golden Script

by Dragonsquill (dragonsquill)



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Afterlife, F/M, Happy Ending, Hints of reincarnation, M/M, Soulmates, but life continues after death, descriptions of character's last moments, major character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 16:51:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1717739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonsquill/pseuds/Dragonsquill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the first life, souls struggle.  They struggle to survive, they struggle for beauty, they struggle for purpose.  The struggle is so powerful that only a fortunate minority find their other in the mountains of Arda. </p><p>For everyone else, it is only the freedom from want and need, the freedom from the driving desire to create, that allows them to find their other.  And so they wait in Mahal's Halls until they find the fitted half of their souls, that they might join them in the new world that is to come.</p><p>  <i>A soul-mates AU with a twist.  Please note that this story is canon-compliant, taking place in the dwarven afterlife.  Major character deaths will be briefly described.  But there is a happy ending, and the Halls are a place of peace, not sadness.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	In Golden Script

**Author's Note:**

> [Blanket Permission Statement](http://dragonsquill.tumblr.com/permission)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Please see the warnings and description, especially as this is quite different from my usual writing (which is to say, my prereader said she loved it, and sad-isn't-the-right-word, but she used three paper towels reading it anyway).

When Fíli jerked awake, it was to a world in darkness.

His heart pounded in his chest, echoed in his ears, the sound almost painful and utterly shocking.

Why should the sound of his heart shock him?

Memory returned to him gradually.

Madness. Blood and death everywhere. Thorin facing Azog. Kíli fleeing to the side of his elf. Standing back-to-back with his uncle. Azog swinging as Thorin fell back, unable to defend himself-

_Oh._

Fíli pressed a hand to his chest. He felt bare skin, but whole. 

A gentle light slowly filled the space around him.

He was in a cave, lying on a soft bed that felt exactly as his bed in Erid Luin had felt. The sheets were blue, and the scent of home slowed the wild pounding of his heart. Light glowed from crystals in the stone walls, clear and sweet. 

He lifted a hand to touch his lips, drew the fingers away.

There was no blood. 

He had been coughing blood.

“I died,” he said aloud, and his voice echoed just once.

He was alone, but that was good. Because the alternative-

_“Fíli! Fíli! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Fíli, don’t-”_

The alternative would mean having someone with him in Mahal’s Halls. 

Slowly, Fíli pushed to stand. He supposed he should feel frightened or angry or sad, but he felt only peaceful. Pain was a memory, dulling already in the back of his mind. 

There had been a great deal of pain.

It had been so hard to breathe.

Now, however, his chest rose and fell with ease, no longer cracked open and spilling his life into the ground. 

And Kíli wasn’t here.

Fíli glanced down at himself – his familiar body, but something strange about it. It took him a moment to realize that not only was his chest whole, but the scattered scars from a life of training, hunting, and scrapping as a hired guard were all gone as well. It made him feel strangely _altered_ , as if he had become something not-quite-himself.

He chuckled at himself, the sound warm. “Well, I have become something else,” he mused aloud. “I could hardly bring my body with me to the Halls.” Slowly, he lifted his arms over his head and felt the stretch in his muscles, just as he had when he was alive. “Not what I was expecting,” he said, then clapped his hands sharply together. “Time to explore, I suppose.”

There was an opening in the wall. Had it been there before? He couldn’t remember. He stepped toward it, following a kindly pull in his chest that seemed to say _pass here safely._ He touched the archway, and it felt like stone, like the arches of Thorin’s Halls, like the walls of Erebor. The souls of dwarves called to stone, but this – he stroked his fingers along the imperfections. This was _home._

Fíli had not died without regrets. He would never see Thorin crowned king. He would never welcome his mother back to her childhood home. He would not be able to find Bilbo and apologize to their Hobbit for not standing up to his uncle’s gold sickness. But he had fallen protecting his uncle, his king. His mother would return to the mountain of her birth. And Kíli was-

“Fíli!”

No.

No.

_No._

Fíli’s body curved against the archway.

It could not be.

He would not accept it.

Hands grabbed him, turned him, stroked over his chest and grabbed his chin and forced him to look-

Into his brother’s face.

\-----

The last minutes of Kíli’s life were filled with horror.

Though he had seen his share of fighting, nothing had prepared Kíli for the battle outside Erebor’s gates. The orcs came in waves, striking down dwarves, men, and elves in droves. Bodies fell in mud made of dirt and blood. People cried out in pain, for mercy, for death, for life, for time. 

He and Fíli survived hours of fighting. Every muscle in his body hurt but he fought on, long out of arrows and depending on his sword. Whenever he faltered, his brother’s shoulder nudged his, his brother’s voice urged him on, “Just one more, Kíli! One more!” until one was fifty and he thought he couldn’t lift his sword again. 

A flash of red caught his eye, and he’d been horrified to realize that it was Tauriel’s hair. He’d hoped against hope that she was back in the Mirkwood, or at her own camp, anywhere but in the midst of blood and gore and death. She stood proud and strong among a group of elves that were being systematically cut down until only she stood, a captain of the guard. Kíli jerked automatically toward her, only to feel the brush of Fíli’s elbow against his arm. 

“Go,” Fíli said.

“I can’t-”

A flash of that familiar smirk. “Go! See if you can bring her back here – I’m sure we could all use the help.” 

Kíli went.

But he didn’t make it.

Tauriel saw him coming. Their eyes met, exhausted and sunken, but her mouth curved into a smile for the briefest of moments – then fell open in horror, releasing a cry. 

At the same moment, terror spiked through Kíli’s chest, born of something outside himself.

When he turned, spinning in the muck, shoving at an orc’s falling body, he saw what Tauriel had warned him of with her wordless shout, what his heart had known without seeing.

Fíli was falling.

He ran.

He was much too far away to catch him. When Kíli reached his brother it was to find Fíli sprawled on his back, blood everywhere, everywhere, on his chest, on his arms, staining the ground and bubbling from his lips.

“Fíli,” he breathed, and the name was a prayer because what was life without Fíli? He had never lived without Fíli.

Fíli smiled at him, red teeth and rattling breaths. “Kíli,” he answered, but his eyes were already dull and he was dying, dying in Kíli’s arms because Kíli had left him.

“Fíli, Fíli. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the words fell from Kíli’s lips, though they did nothing, changed nothing. “I’m sorry. Don’t-”

“Get up,” his brother said, instead of accepting the apology, instead of absolving him, but he was still smiling. “Get up and fight.”

And then it was over.

One breath and no other and-

Kíli rose like a wild thing, overcome with grief and rage.

Fíli had lived five years without Kíli. With this yawning void in his chest.

Kíli lived less than half an hour without Fíli.

\----

He woke in a cave of light, still floating on the same peace that had overcome him as he fell on the battlefield. It had been arrows to kill him, and some part of his mind had chuckled at the irony even as the pain split him in two and drove him to his knees. 

He wasn’t wearing anything, but that seemed the least of his troubles. He pushed to sit up, glanced around – and immediately saw a fall of honey-colored hair over strong shoulders, the bare line of a back.

Joy felt sharp and painful and perfect.

“Fíli!” he cried, and then fear struck through the joy because his brother crumpled against the archway and did that mean he was still hurt? Why should he be injured when Kíli felt whole and healthy as he had never been in life? 

Kíli lurched forward, all his grace gone. He grabbed those shoulders and turned Fíli toward him, expecting blood and that horrible line of exposed rib, but finding strong muscle, firm skin, thick curls of hair. Blindly, Kíli grabbed his brother’s chin as he would never have done in life and tilted up his face. 

_Blood bubbling between his lips._

_Joy_ was not a strong enough word when he met those shocked blue eyes in a face whole and clean. 

Kíli threw his arms around his brother and squeezed tight enough to pull the smaller dwarf to his toes. Fíli didn’t smell of death and blood and sweat. He smelled of sunshine and firewood, of the sharp bite of metal and the mellow tang of smoke. 

“No,” Fíli whispered, but Kíli didn’t let go.

\-----

Fíli hit him.

He didn’t mean to do it. It wasn’t a conscious decision. It just happened.

“I told you to fight!” he growled as Kíli stumbled back, looking surprised but not especially pained at the sudden assault on his jaw.

“I did!” Kíli argued. “I didn’t exactly throw myself on my sword!”

Fíli huffed.

Kíli huffed.

They glared at each other.

“I wanted you to live,” Fíli finally said, and oh, it was the greatest understatement of his life.

_I wanted you to live. I wanted you to welcome Mother home. I wanted you to be king. I wanted you to marry, and have children, and oversee a kingdom rich with gold and family. I wanted you to have everything, everything, from the day you were born._

Kíli’s gaze softened. “I felt the same,” he said, and reached out, and Fíli leaned into his embrace without meaning to.

They held on.

\-----

Through the archway was a hall.

“I suppose we follow it until we run into everyone else,” Fíli said, hands on hips. They’d explored their little cave, in search of clothes, but no luck. _Maybe everyone’s naked in the afterlife,_ Kíli had suggested with a grin that made Fíli roll his eyes and smirk back at him all at once.

“Best plan we have at the moment,” Kíli said.

Fíli held out his hand, like he had when they were children.

Kíli didn’t hesitate. He slipped his hand in Fíli’s, their palms strangely smooth without the calluses they’d built up in life. Together, they stepped into the Halls of their maker.

\-----

They were greeted by their father.

He wrapped his arms around them both at once, amidst laughter and tears and intense love that glowed warm in their chest and, in some way, from the crystals scattered in the stone. 

“My boys,” their father said, and his voice was rough and warm, just as they remembered, a bit abrupt. “I shouldn’t say I’m happy to see you, given the circumstances.”

Kíli laughed and Fíli’s mouth twisted into something like a smile. 

He told them how to get dressed – _imagine clothes, things are pretty simple here_ – and how to navigate the vast caverns – _there’s a pull in your belly, follow it, it will take you to the people of Erebor_ – and where to find family – _most are still here, though some have moved on._

“Moved on?” Fíli asked, frowning. “Moved on to where? Aren’t these the Halls of Mahal?”

“Aye,” their father agreed, trailing his fingers along the shimmering walls, leading them, he said, to a large room where spirits gathered. “But it doesn’t end here. There comes a time when you’re ready to move on, to wait until the world is reborn. We will help shape the new world.”

“Why are you still here then?” Kíli asked. 

“I’m waiting,” their father answered, “for my other.” 

And then they were in the cavern, and there was their grandfather Thrain and their grandmother Tarin, there was their long-dead uncle ( _He does look like you, Fíli! Or I suppose you look like him?_ ), and everyone was talking at once, greeting them and laughing and crying and asking _So how’d you go, son?_ like all conversations opened with inquiries about how you died.

\-----

In the Halls, there was only time.

Time filled with family and laughter, with food or music or talk or solitude, if you preferred.

For Fíli and Kíli, this meant time spent together. 

In life, they had been close. There had been whispers and speculation, jokes and jeers, jealousy and longing, which followed in their shared footsteps. They hadn’t been true. They were brothers. They were blood and bone. Their lives were intertwined because they grew up together, because they suited each other as friends, because they suited each other as comrades in arms. It had not been more than that.

_Never more than that, in the light of day, when they faced each other, when the subconscious slept and the conscious mind took over-_

Time didn’t make a great deal of sense in the Hall. They could sleep if they wanted, or not if they preferred, but all too soon, their grandfather Thrain stopped in mid-conversation and said, “Thorin is here.” 

Frerin went to greet him, and bring him to the family.

\------

“My boys,” he whispered, and gathered them against him, and this was their uncle without the lust for gold clouding his eyes. “I am sorry. I am sorry. I failed you.”

Fíli and Kíli gripped his shirt – no mail, only rich cloth that he would have worn in the long-ago days as a true prince of Erebor, little more than a boy – bunching the fabric in their hands. Tears fell without shame, of loss and failure and joy and reuniting.

In the Halls, there was forgiveness.

\-----

They worried about their mother, but the worry felt dulled. 

“The connection to the world wears after a while,” Frerin told them. He was a great deal like Kíli, with an easy smile and warm manner, though Fíli had inherited his looks. Fíli had spent his entire life being told he was the image of his uncle. It felt strange and right all at once to actually look him in the eye and see the truth to it. “It doesn’t mean you don’t love your mother.”

“I think it’s because we’re meant to be happy here, and we couldn’t be if we constantly worried about those left behind.” He smiled and squeezed their shoulders. He was younger than they when he died, but his time in the Halls gave him a sort of serene wisdom his nephews lacked. “And she’ll join us one day, though I suspect she won’t linger long.”

“Why not?” They were sitting on soft cushions that smelled of the forge and good memories with their uncle, who sat in quiet conference with his mother. There were whispers that Thrain and his wife would soon go forward, whatever that meant, now that they had seen their son.

“Because some dwarves are lucky enough to find their other in the first life,” Frerin answered easily, “and so they don’t have to wait to find them here.”

Fíli and Kíli shared a confused look. 

Frerin tilted his head. “You haven’t sensed it? Most don’t have to be told.”

“Told what?” Kíli asked.

\-----

_In the first life, souls struggle. They struggle to survive, they struggle for beauty, they struggle for purpose. The struggle is so powerful that only a fortunate minority find their other in the mountains of Arda._

_For everyone else, it is only the freedom from want and need, the freedom from the driving desire to create, that allows them to find their other._

_And so they wait in the Halls, until they find their other, the fitted half of their souls._

_And they are marked, their souls, their new bodies, so that they might find each other with ease when the world is reborn. So that the pain of one life is not visited upon the next._

_A soul’s mate, marked in flesh and bone when the world was renewed._

\----

 

“They tell me more are waiting than ever before. I suppose because so many died young. Your other shares a lifetime with you, but there is no guarantee you will cross paths.” Frerin grinned, wide and so like Kíli that it made Fíli’s heart hurt. “I imagine mine will be quite elderly when she crosses into the Halls. She’s certainly made me wait a good long time.”

Kíli did not see the look on his brother’s face, because he lowered his own head and hid behind a curtain of dark hair. It was an old habit from childhood he never quite broke. 

But Frerin saw it.

And Frerin’s heart went out to his eldest nephew, as he saw the truth.

He wondered if they knew.

\----

When they were children, Fíli and Kíli were often treated as one unit, even when they weren’t together.

 _FíliandKíli_ were known for causing their share of trouble, that was true enough. There weren’t enough children for properly structured activities, and everyone had a tendency to indulge them. They climbed and pranked and wrestled and teased. They told stories as if they were truth and played long and loudly in the markets. They sneaked biscuits and broke dishes and used weapons they weren’t ready for. 

_FíliandKíli_ were known for being very happy children as well. They laughed easily and often, shared affection with abandon, and loved to be underfoot in a way they thought was utterly helpful. 

They hated to see anyone sad, and would play like puppies or curl up like kittens or flutter like baby birds to bring even a stranger out of depression. 

They were happy children, who wished to see their people happy.

Where _FíliandKíli_ went, laughter was sure to follow.

And so, despite their mischief and their flashes of wildness, they were well-loved among their people.

\-----

Fíli went to Reela. 

Reela had been in the Halls longer than anyone else. 

And so she knew more, as knowledge came easily in the halls, only needing time to grow and develop.

There were those who whispered she must have been waiting more than any dwarf’s lifetime. There were those who whispered she would wait forever, because her other had never come.

“What happens if a dwarf’s other is not a dwarf?” he asked, and he thought of his brother’s voice, of starlight, of healing.

Reela had died quite young. She appeared no more than twenty. But her eyes were gentle, and very old. “I don’t know,” she said, after a long silence that lay easily between them. 

There was always enough time, in the Halls.

“I don’t believe it’s happened. We are an insular race. We don’t trust others with our secrets, much less with our hearts.” In life, Reela was nobody. She was the daughter of miners. She died with her parents in a crash of stone and fear. In the halls, she was a sage. “Why do you ask?”

“My brother . . .” Fíli glanced back over his shoulder. Kíli was laughing, talking with a younger sister of Gloin and Oin neither had known of until they arrived. He was laughing, but there was something wrong with it. Something artificial. “My brother fell in love with an elf.”

“The elves are in the Undying Lands,” Reela said, and the knowledge rose in their minds together.

 _They may not pass into these Halls,_ whispered something in their hearts.

“Then I will stay here with him,” Fíli said.

“And what of when your other comes?”

Fíli met her eyes, and he knew he did not have to say it.

_There is no other for me._

\------

Their mother came to the Halls.

Her hair was more gray than black, but oh, she was a great beauty still. And she held on to them, stroked their faces and laughed at their exuberance, with a laugh that sounded rusty and out of use. She fussed over Thorin, and held her boys again, and then their father touched her hands, pulled her close-

And they realized why she would not linger in the Halls.

The soul mark was beautiful, a golden script upon their arms and a glow of warmth, the runes ancient and powerful and gorgeous. Trappings of life fell away until their bare bodies glowed with messages: _Mother, Father, Sister, Friend, Wife, Husband, Lover_

_Waiting. Reunited._

They did not linger. 

They did not say farewell, because the understanding rose-

_It is only time._

_And you have all the time you need._

_But I do not need more._

_I love you._

When the stone took them, only one word was left on their arms, matching: _Endurance._

\------

When Fíli was in his thirties, a group of older boys cornered him and spat filth in his face.

They called him _defiler._ They called him _sick._

They accused him of acts he didn’t even understand yet.

Acts on Kíli.

He would never hurt Kíli.

And the things they said – they sounded painful.

Manipulative.

And they beat him.

Ten years later, Fíli understood what they meant that day in the alley.

But he didn’t forget the words they spat at him. 

_-pinning your own brother down-_

_-just a boy, and the way you look at him-_

_-such an ugly thing, of course only his brother would want him-_

_-do you call him baby brother when you fuck him-_

But it was never true.

Not when he was awake. Not outside his dreams.

There were no dreams in the Halls.

\--------

One by one, the Company came and parted. The only sign of time was their well-loved faces, laugh-lines and gray hair and scars. Reunions were joyous, but so were partings. When Ori arrived, on the heels of Balin, and told of the fall of Moria, the others listened as to an exciting story that happened to strangers. 

Balin left quickly, and, to the shock of those who remained, he took Reela with him.

She had died when he was only a babe in arms.

Ori lingered. 

“Do you know whom you’re waiting for?” Kíli asked, and there was something in his voice that did not belong in the Halls - a longing, a knowledge of pain he did not know how to solve.

Ori smiled at him, a gentle smile but anticipatory. “Yes.”

Dwalin was the last of the Company to arrive, and he was a very old dwarf indeed, who created his armor when he created his clothes, even here.

And Kíli laughed when Ori greeted him, and there were the golden runes on their skin, all mixed in with Dwalin’s inkings, because he would never have suspected, but it was perfect, in its way.

Before Ori left, he took Kíli’s hand in his, bright still with shining symbols of love and fulfillment, and said, “It’s time for you to go as well.”

“I don’t have my other,” Kíli argued.

“You have always had him,” Ori answered, before he faded into stone with the huge old warrior at his side.

 _Strength_ their arms, twined together, proclaimed in shimmering text.

\-----

When Kíli was fifty, his family sent Fíli away with Thorin.

He didn’t understand why. It clearly hadn’t been planned. One night they were laughing in bed, hands in each other’s hair and legs tangled, and the next he was alone. 

_You need time apart,_ his mother said gently. _He’ll be home soon._

Thorin kept Fíli away for more than three years, wandering the scattered kingdoms of dwarves.

They were long years. 

Kíli still laughed, but there was an edge to it. An emptiness.

The dwarves of Erid Luin saw less of him. No princes tumbled under foot, offering help, bringing laughter.

Kíli trained for hours, on the range, alone in the woods.

He became a great archer. But he rarely smiled, not with the wild abandon of his youth.

When Fíli came back, he was still Fíli, still Kíli’s brother, who understood him better than anyone else.

And Kíli’s smile came back, and his laugh, and more slowly Fíli’s slow smirks and sly chuckles, until the princes were again spreading pranks and humor throughout their tired people, and put their backs into rebuilding the mountain with endless good humor.

Thorin and Dis never attempted to part them again.

But there was something different in Fíli. Something that settled in his shoulders and in his eyes and never left. Something that made him curl on his side of their bed until they were given two. Something that made him stop touching Kíli’s hair, or his jaw, or his hip, but keep his hands to his brother’s shoulders and wrists. 

The distance, slight as it may seem to the rest of the world, had been awkward, and sad, and wrong, down in Kíli’s bones.

But he had grown used to it over time.

Though he never understood the look in Fíli’s eyes, that rare flash of something that led to a week at arm’s-length before they fell into step again.

\---

“It’s fear,” Frerin told him before he joined the stone with a bent old female with laughing eyes. “It’s still there, even here, where it shouldn’t be.” 

And he frowned across at his own brother. 

\-----

Thorin left alone.

It was not unheard of, there had been others. It was no more cause for mourning than a pair leaving. 

There were those dwarves who simply knew when it was time, who felt peace with that moment, and were content. They did not have an other, but they had something else.

When Thorin rose from among the gathered spirits, an expression of tranquility on his face such as Fíli and Kíli had never seen, silver swirled through the air, and shimmered. 

The runes that covered his body were old, almost unrecognizable, and quiet murmurs rose as knowledge was born – _a true heir of Durin._

Thorin reached for Kíli, squeezed the back of his neck and touched their foreheads together. “Take care of your brother,” he said, and Kíli smiled and answered, “I think he considers that his job.”

Then he crossed to Fíli, and rested his hands on Fíli’s strong shoulders. “You were always the heir of my heart,” he said, and he leaned down to press a kiss to his nephew’s forehead as he did when they were children and more free with his affection. “You gifted me love and laughter, and I was cruel to you, when I did not intend to be,” he said quietly. “I would give those years back to you if I could. But now you have time. I know you will use it well.” And he smiled.

 _Guardian_ shown in silver over his proud heart as the stone embraced him.

\----

“How long do you think it’s been?” Kíli asked as he curled around his brother on a sunny patch of grass that certainly couldn’t exist inside a cave. There were more strangers than loved ones left in the Halls now. Dimly, he recalled names of those who had merged into the stone: _Mother, Father, Thorin, Frerin._ But mostly there were only flashes of faces that brought fond affection.

“Dwalin said he was nearly 300,” Fíli answered. “That was some time ago.”

Kíli stroked his fingers through Fíli’s hair, as he had done when they were children, in those long decades before Thorin stole his brother away and returned a dwarf afraid of such touches. In the Halls, when Fíli pulled away, Kíli simply followed. “Why are we still here?”

Fíli sighed. The sound echoed here, where there was only meant to be serenity. “Because elves can’t come to the Halls.”

Kíli frowned. “Elves?” he asked, and dug through long-dimmed memories. He came up with only a flash of red hair and a choking desperation to live. “Why should that matter?”

Fíli didn’t lift his head. Instead, he pressed his eyes to Kíli’s shoulder. “Because you were in love with an elf.”

“I don’t even remember her,” Kíli argued. “How could I be waiting here for someone I don’t remember?”

He felt his brother’s frown against his skin. “What do you remember?”

“You,” Kíli answered immediately. “I remember you.”

A soft chuckle. “Of course you remember me. I’m your brother.”

“Well. Yes. But you’re…you’re all I remember now. I remember you.” Kíli pressed a kiss to the thick honeyed hair.

Fíli went still.

“I am your _brother_ ,” he said again.

Comprehension rose in Kíli, and crested, and bubbled out in joy and a wild laugh low in his chest. Had he been willfully blind, not to see such a perfect gift all this time? 

His other with him, from the day he was born.

The laugh burst free.

Fíli jerked away.

Kíli grabbed his arms.

“You knew,” Kíli said. “How long have you known?” There was no anger in his voice, no room for anger with this all-encompassing _elation_ that rolled and crashed and filled his fingers and toes. 

“I am your brother.”

“If you were not my brother,” Kíli told him in a voice that was not a question, “you would have been my husband.”

Fíli flinched away from him, and the sunlight in their corner dimmed, and disappeared until there was only a weak glow of crystal among the shadow. “Then we wouldn’t have been brothers,” he said quietly. 

And that. He could not have lived such a life.

Kíli kissed him.

It was awkward and imperfect and dry and everything that first kisses are.

“Why didn’t you tell me we were supposed to be both?”

_You’re older, Fíli. Kíli adores you. You can’t take advantage of that. Whatever this is, it will pass. Give it time._

Fíli parted his lips to answer.

But the answer did not come.

Thorin’s actions all those years – centuries? – ago had been well-meaning. But he had been wrong.

_Now you have time. I know you will use it well._

Fíli had all the time in the world.

And it was never going to be enough.

His hands slid into tangled brown strands, and he pulled Kíli’s lips back to his.

It was warm, and a little too wet, and made their hearts race, as second kisses do.

“I didn’t think we were supposed to be,” he confessed, “but I was wrong.”

The third kiss was filled with laughter.

\------

The golden script on their bodies read

_Brother_

_Friend_

_Companion_

_Beloved_

_Birth_

_Death_

_Eternity_

And, overlaid with laughter that filled the Halls, that magnified and swept through the gathered souls until the great cavern of Mahal rang with the delight of Durin’s folk

_Joy_

\-----

The stone called Fíli and Kíli home.

They curled together, twin souls who had been gifted every moment of their lives without truly understanding the present they had been granted.

And waited.

Until the world was reborn, and so were they.

The gift would not be squandered a second time. For on their souls and in their skin, in golden script, was what they brought each other.

**Author's Note:**

> Now that this has been up a while, there is a post which expands a bit on this [here](http://dragonsquill.tumblr.com/post/87402765624/fanfic-bts), telling how each member of the company Crossed and answering a couple of questions.


End file.
